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Media Product Review

What
the Health is a documentary that was released on March 7th, 2017
(access the trailer here). I chose this movie because it is informational,
eye-opening, and at the very least, interesting. Knowledge is power, and this
documentary, although extremely biased towards living a vegan lifestyle, has a
lot of health facts that people don’t always know about. Being vegan is all
over social media, there are a multitude of other documentaries like this one (Forks over Knives, Vegucated, Cowspiracy,
etc.), and this lifestyle is talked about constantly. I found this documentary
extremely eye opening, not only for health reasons, but also to become more informed
about the corruption in the food industry that no one really knows/talks about.

Veganism
is identified as being someone who does not eat any animal products. This
includes even eating honey, as it comes from bees. On a more basic level
though, it consists of not eating meat, dairy, eggs, or any byproduct of an
animal. The documentary What the Health,
in a nutshell, gives viewers who don’t know much about this lifestyle, an
eye-opening look in to what these animal products do to our bodies. This
information is given in the hopes we all convert to living this vegan
lifestyle. One of the producers, Kip Andersen, has a family history of heart
disease, diabetes, and cancer, making him very aware of the role food has on
our health. Although he knew this from a young age, he still ate animal
products, until he finished documenting all the implications even cheese and
meat have on your health. He is now a vegan himself, and promotes this
lifestyle through the documentaries he’s made, as well as living the life
himself and letting others see how it has made him feel. He is also a yoga
teacher who originally graduated with a business degree from Cal Poly San Luis
Obispo, before founding the AUM Films and Media that his two works have been
published through. The second producer, Keegan Kuhn, is an award-winning
filmmaker, and plays music professional as well. He takes pride in his
filmmaking, but also has a passion for the environment, animals, and overall
health. Through the combination of these three things, he has been able to help
video Kip Andersen’s films that promote all the things Keegan is also
passionate about. Together they have filmed What
the Health, and Cowspiracy, both
pieces of film promote living a vegan lifestyle. The film I will be focusing
on, What the Health, is available to watch
online for $9.99, but it
is a non-profit film, so any proceeds go to the various organizations the film
makers want it to go to. This makes it difficult to find how much the
documentary has made, but it does have a viewer rating of 8.4 out of 10 on
IMDb. As stated, this documentary was filmed by the same people who filmed Cowspiracy in 2014, both films have
several similarities and differences.

Several similarities are present
between these two documentaries, as they are promoting the same lifestyle:
veganism. The producers don’t just promote this lifestyle through their own
experiences, but they go in depth by talking to professionals in both
documentaries. These are people like doctors, nutritionists, environmentalists,
and many others who all promote being vegan. In What the Health several doctors don’t just promote this lifestyle,
but they live it themselves, and urge their patients to as well. These
patients, are shown throughout the documentary, where they go from a very poor
health state living under the typical American diet, to becoming the healthiest
they’ve ever been while living a vegan lifestyle. In Cowspiracy the same producers go throughout the world talking to
several different scientists who cover topics regarding the environmental
impacts of not being vegan have on our planet. These professionals all back
their information with facts they have researched and proven, so it allows you
to be more trustworthy of the things they say. Lastly, throughout the
documentaries, they both show the corruption that is going on with health
organizations. For example, although beef should not be promoted to people who
have heart disease, the American Heart Association promotes eating beef. This
was later found to be due to beef companies sponsoring the very heart
organizations that promote them to their clients. If they don’t promote these
brands of foods, the organizations won’t have the sponsors they do, leaving
funding for research unavailable. The same type of corruption was shown in the Cowspiracy documentary. Although there
are these similarities, there are some differences between the documentaries as
well. One big difference is that What the
Health is a vegan documentary based on the beneficial health effects of
living this lifestyle, whereas Cowspiracy
is all about the environment, and how it is changed negatively while we stay
living the standard American diet, and not becoming vegan. Another example of a
difference between the two documentaries is the agenda the producers had
towards the viewers. What the Health
was individual based, and was promoting you to be a vegan so that you could
live a healthier lifestyle, and feel better. The Cowspiracy was trying to target a large population of people
because fixing the environment through veganism isn’t just individual, it’s a
team effort that needs to be done all together so our planet can thrive. In
relation to the similarities and differences between other films of this genre,
What the Health, and all the other
documentaries in the vegan category, all promote a vegan lifestyle. This is the
main similarity, but the differences involve how they get that point across as
to why this is the best option for people. For example, Forks Over Knives gets the veganism pitch across the table by
relating the American diet to causing diseases like cancer, heart disease, and
diabetes, this is similar to What the
Health. Another vegan documentary, Meat
the Truth, examines the possibility of a relationship between factory
farmed animals and global climate change, like Cowspiracy.

As I said already, knowledge is
power. I’m not the best at always following this motto, but when it comes to
the topics of health and the environment, I’d like to say I’m a pretty avid
learner. The documentary What the Health
is filled with information that everyone needs to know. I’m not saying this
because I think everyone should go vegan, but because you can’t deny the facts
they talk about that can help everyone’s diet get better, and improve your
life. These facts, such as the implications fat, not sugar, has on causing
diabetes and heart disease, are checked by other doctors and proven to be true.
That is why this movie is so important for people to watch, it gives
information that is isn’t common knowledge, but things that everyone should
know, and have been proven to be factual. Over one third of adults in America
are considered obese, yet several fad diets are advertised constantly, but not
able to be adopted as a lifestyle, which results in the person going back to
their old ways. This is a common theme with our culture right now, because
people aren’t always adopting lifestyles that are healthy and applicable to
long-term goals, whereas a vegan diet is. This goes against the common trend in
our culture of people wanting a quick fix to being overweight, because this
“diet” is a long-term, healthy way to lose weight, but the people adopting it
for a healthier lifestyle need to know it is not a quick fix. Kids are the products
of their parents, so to get children on a vegan diet, you will most likely have
to go through their parents. This is why the documentary’s target population is
young to middle-aged adults. While the documentary targets this age group, the
producers may be offensive at times when trying to get their point across. They
will say how if you live the standard American diet, you’ll become obese, get heart
disease or diabetes, and ultimately die. This is an extreme point, and may do
the opposite of getting people to change their diets, but rather get them to
turn the movie off. I would encourage a different approach, as non-vegans
watching may get offended, or even feel like it’s too late for them to change
since they’ve eaten “bad” their whole lives already.

Aside from the weakness stated
above, there are a couple others as well. Firstly, the documentary is extremely
biased. Every professional they talk to in the movie is a vegan themselves, so
they are obviously going to promote this lifestyle. These same professionals do
back their claims by research, but nonetheless, people may be more adherent to
the information if someone who wasn’t vegan did the research, and then decided
to go vegan themselves, not an already vegan doing the research. Aside from
these weaknesses, there are quite a few strengths to balance it out. To start,
although it is biased, I’ve worked at looking up the claims made, and found a large
majority of it to be true. When fact checking, and finding truths, it makes me
trust these producer’s other documentary, and any future ones as well. Another
strength is that it doesn’t just show people stating claims, but it also shows
real people in the documentary going from a standard American diet, sick,
unhealthy, and on several medications, to a vegan diet, where in just under a
month they feel better, can exercise, and are on half the amount of medications
they were in the beginning. If nothing else makes you eager to implement some
parts of this diet into your life, seeing real people, un-fabricated, get
healthier, is very persuading, I think. With all that being said, I found this
documentary to be very good. I’m definitely pro-vegan, or at least implementing
some of these healthy habits into your life, so I might be a little biased
myself, but this documentary is very informational and has tons of truth to it
as well. These producers only have one other documentary out, Cowspiracy, and I’ve seen it as well. I
would say What the Health was an even
better documentary, as it is more targeted towards the health reasons to go vegan,
not the environmental reasons. I’m all for the environment, but I feel like
people, myself included, are more encouraged when their health is talked about.
We have an obesity epidemic, as stated already, so I think this movie will be around,
and become more popular in years to come. People looking to change their eating
habits may stumble across this documentary, or others like it, so it will be
watched by many people in the future. All of this is what I think, but critics have
their opinions as well. The Orlando Nutritionist website has agreements and
disagreements with the claims in this documentary. The author of the article “can’t overstate enough that I am totally in favor
of the main points What the Health is trying to make. Eat more plants.” They
go on to talk about this, as well as how diets aren’t a “one size fits all”.
They point out how many people may feel great on a vegan diet, but the
documentary fails to talk about how others may flourish by keeping their diet
they have already, and just taking out/adding a few tips from the documentary.
They’re main point against this documentary is not that they don’t agree with
the producers, but that the producers are failing to talk about all the other
healthy things people can do in their life without going cold turkey and
changing their whole diet completely. Another critic from the Loveland Medical
Clinic states that the documentary is a “great showing on how corporate
America is influencing our diet”, but has “crap science and is totally one
sided.” This is more extreme, as there are numerous people who fact check and
prove the claims in the documentary are true, but also agree that it is
completely one-sided. I’d say in comparison to what I believe, The Orlando
Nutritionist is what I’m more in agreement with, but I don’t agree with hardly
any claims made by the Loveland Medical Clinic (as they are extremely biased
themselves). With some negative comments through the media, as stated above,
the producers also have a lot of support. This is seen through their social
media pages that they use to support the documentary.

Kip Andersen and Keegan
Kuhn don’t promote their works on their personal Instagram pages, but there are
specific pages for the documentaries they’ve produced. The What the Health page has over 86 thousand followers, close to 300
posts, with an average of around 5,000 likes per post. Through this page they
promote the documentary, the book that is joined with it, the vegan lifestyle,
and occasional funny memes to joke about the standard American diet. The majority
of the individuals who post comments on the photos are raving about the
documentary, with multiple people saying, “I’m switching to veganism right
now”, or “I don’t know why I haven’t done this lifestyle sooner”, etc. This is
very good publicity for the producers, as it gives people who haven’t seen the
film, but read the posts, an incentive to watch the documentary. This
documentary, along with their first one, Cowspiracy,
have been some of the few I’ve ever seen (other than the ones in school I was
forced to watch). After seeing What the
Health,I saw online that they
had produced the other one previously, so I had to watch it as well. Luckily
for me, I have Netflix, so I could watch both for “free” with my monthly
subscription. You can also access Cowspiracy
here, for around $5.00, and What the
Health here,
for around double the cost. I’m such a promoter of this documentary, because it
was very eye opening for not only me, but my boyfriend as well. He’s the only
one who has seen it that I know, but I’m hoping to get other family and friends
to watch it as well. He loved the movie, and has started implementing some of
the health habits they talk about into his own life, and in the last month has felt
a lot more energetic, and healthy. He thought it was just as informative as I
did, and hopes his family will watch the documentary as well.

All
in all, this documentary was very informative, had a lot of factual information,
even if it was biased, and talks about health in realistic terms that everyone
should know. Although there is a “target population”, this documentary could be
watched by anyone, and they would benefit from what it can teach them. Not only
does it talk about being vegan for your health, but also for the animals
suffering in factory farms, and how stopping the market for animal products
will help stop the corruption of health agencies who are sponsored by the very
products they recommend, but shouldn’t. I learned all this, but I learned even
more while doing my own research for this post. There are a lot of critics and
doctors out there who dispute the information in this documentary, even though
these same doctors can’t back up their points, while the doctors in the movie
can with the research they’ve conducted. I noticed this trend, but I also
realized how this lifestyle isn’t possible for everyone. Some people are on
different welfare programs, get their food from fish food banks, and don’t
always have access to the foods this documentary promotes, all while still
needing to feed their families some way or another. I became more aware of how
much I promote this documentary, and how not everyone can live by the “rules”
they advertise. With that, even making just small changes can be very easy and
everyone has access to resources that they need to make small changes with, and
the smallest change can make a very big difference in your long-term health.